“I’m risking my damn nervous system because of these stories.”

Scott McClanahan’s Stories V! is a collection of stories portraying life in Rainelle, West Virginia. According to Wikipedia about 1,500 to 2,000 people live in Rainelle.  It is a small town.  But what a small town is is relative. 2,000 people living in a town a 1,000 years ago would have been a huge town.  McClanahan takes the view that this town is huge.  That it is full of life and is even epic.  That every life lived there is important and vital, and should be discussed.  It is easy to forget, in these times of globalism and world trade and having the ability to watch revolutions 10,000 miles away unfold on television, that the world is still made up predominately of little towns with normal people living their little lives.  But no one’s life is little to themselves, and no one’s life is little to the people that surround them.  I personally grew up in a small town called Vienna with a population of 994.  Everyone knew when Mr. Turner died who owned IGA, everyone talked up a storm when the Dairy Mart turned into a Circle K, everyone knew that so and so was smoking pot and who was Catholic, everyone knew who had money and didn’t have money, who was trouble and wasn’t trouble, who worked at the Chevy plant up the highway.  Everybody knew everybody else’s business.  We are all stars in Vienna, we were all big fish in a little pond.

Noah Cicero: How much do you think you wrote before you tried to publish anything?

Scott McClanahan: A shit ton. A SHIT TON. I’m not sure how much a shit ton means in terms of word count, but ten years probably. I’ve never been that good at math.

NC: Do you think you have improved as a writer since the 1st book and how?  I personally think you have improved.  It seems like you have more control over your voice now, and you are more exact.  In Stories I you weren’t precise.

SM: Hmmmm. I don’t know if I’ve improved. I think my instincts have sharpened though and I’ve learned some tricks. You’re right about that.

I was using that “biblical” style in the first book and messing around with the idea of JUST the anecdote. I’ve decided to cut that out though because I want to be famous. NYC editors hate the “biblical” style.

I always have problems analyzing something like that in a Heisenberg principle sort of way.

I think most serious discussions are like the one I heard in Kroger in 2006. Two fat women were standing around talking about politics and Iraq. This was in Rainelle, strange enough. One big woman said to the other big woman, “Well I can tell you right now. I’m not voting for that George W. again.”

This was of course 2006, in the middle of his second term, and she had no idea he couldn’t run for a third term.

But that’s America for ya, and most self-analysis as well.

NC: I watched one of your readings and you seemed to enjoy reading to people.  How do you feel when you read out loud to people?  Do you feel that you are taking part in the oral tradition of mankind?

SM: I’ve never really been into the “oral,” thing, but I like readings.

Of course, most people are such bad readers of writing now (meaning people who read books, not the author reading them out loud). The “reading” kind of levels the playing field. I mean the university has trained writers to babble on about innovation. They say, “She only uses semicolons as her only form of punctuation,” or, “He completely eliminates the article ‘the.’ How interesting.”

That shit doesn’t work for an audience. The reading is a revelator in that way. I guess most readings are bad because most writers don’t believe in their words (reading them out loud will show you very quickly whether or not you believe in them). How is anyone going to connect to you and believe in you, if you can’t believe in yourself, and look them in the eye?

This is not to say I don’t doubt my ass off, but I can look you in your eye in the middle of that doubt. That’s fine if you don’t like the words, but this isn’t some school assignment I’m doing here. I got hellhounds on my trail. Something is chasing me, and I know what it is. I’m not just writing a story in the second person because some teacher asked me to do it.

Sadly, reading series have created part of the problem too. I’ve done some series that feel so micro-managed. Don’t read for more than this amount of time. No this. No that. If you go over your time, we’ll blow our stupid whistle at you, and throw donkey poop. Actually, I think a reading where people are throwing donkey poop might be fun.

I have yet to have a reading series tell me though, “I want you to be amazing. I want you to produce collective orgasm or levitation. I want you to be vulnerable and move me to tears.”

It’s an art form waiting to happen if people would just believe in it, believe in each other. I believe in folks, I know that much.

NC: Your stories all take place in Rainelle.  Do you plan when you’re older naming your books The Rainelle Legend or The Epic of Rainelle?

SM: Actually it’s going to be called Rainelle. These three books anyway. Hopefully, I can get Mr. Giancarlo DiTrapano to edit and put it out. Maybe he’ll see his name pop up in his Google alert and he’ll agree.

My wife refuses to live there, or really even visit, but I wish I could move back. It feels like the Wild West to me.

My wife actually had a guy in the hospital the other day who was a 90-year-old heroin addict (he was missing an eye too) and lived in Rainelle. Seriously, a 90-year-old heroin addict. My mother used to throw away my William S. Burroughs books because (insert sweet mom voice here), “We don’t want to support that man’s bad habits Scott.” And now we have senior citizens shooting up in our alleys. WOW.

NC: I have had this discussion with writers, there seems to be several kinds of modes you can attack writing with: one is commercial, you write mediocre fiction to make money and get famous.  You can write “literature” if you are a professor, which is usually not very entertaining but complicated in technique.  But there is also I’m going to call it, “legacy literature.” When I read Sam Pink, Tao Lin, xTx or you I can see that you are trying to create something that is entertaining but at the same time timeless.  There is something universal about it that can transcend the eras and cultural landscapes, and the concern for immediate success is not found in the writer.  Why have you chosen to write this way?  And it seems that in America this literature has not occurred since the 60s, like there was a dead time for literature in America, like the idea of writing timeless literature was turned off.  Why do you think there is a sudden rise of writers trying to write something timeless?

SM: I’m not sure. I think the most deep, profound thing that has ever been said or told about why people read, write, and are entertained comes from Faulkner (a writer who irks the hell out of me most times).

He was in a bookstore once doing a signing and a very proper, bible toting, southern lady came up to him with a copy she just purchased. She told him she had heard a lot about his book, but she wasn’t sure that she would like it because of the subject matter.

He just looked her up and down and then said rather softly, “I’m sure you’ll love it Ma’am. It’s nothing but cheap trash.”

I’m just trying to do that—produce authentic trash. I want readers. I don’t deny that. The Clash couldn’t have made London Calling without having an audience. I want to be able to play up to that audience.

There’s a comfort in knowing that you’re doing something that no one else gives a shit about. It means you don’t have to worry about connection. And if you don’t have to worry about connection then you don’t have to worry about being vulnerable and getting hurt. I’m risking my damn nervous system because of these stories. People would be shocked if they knew how much of this stuff is just me.

NC: Much of your writing concerns humiliation and shame, Terrorists, Sex Tapes, Nicky, all these stories concern humiliation and shame.  It is strange, in philosophy, political thought and psychology the concept of humiliation never gets discussed, but in literature it is a common theme in Dostoyevsky to Rhys to Bukowski.  Humiliation to me seems very real, very important in our daily lives, but we never talk about it.  I watched a five-hour documentary called The Story of India the other day on Netflix and their society seems to be nothing but “humiliation equations.” In America, people consume massive amounts of shit they don’t need because they don’t want to be humiliated.  See the thing about a person that writes about humiliation is that you can see, “this person has been humbled.” (Bringing my Christian roots there.)  People who don’t admit their humiliations to me, I consider phony or even dangerous.  Politicians to me generally seem phony because they refuse to admit that they could ever be humiliated.  What is your theory on humiliation, why have you decided to discuss it?

SM: Yeah, I don’t trust a person who doesn’t have a “the last time I shit my pants, or the last time I almost shit my pants” story to tell me.

I guess one of my earliest memories is of humiliation. I was about four and we lived next to the welfare apartments. This kid who was six just came up to me and started kicking my ass. He busted my nose. He busted my lip. I remember thinking, “Why is this kid punching me in the face?” I think I even asked, “Why are you punching me in the face? Let’s be friends.” He just did it because his brother told him to. We even became buddies later on.

I come from a place where I’ve watched my father humiliated. See how you feel when you see your father on strike in the middle of a rainstorm. See him come home covered in snow. And I’m talking about one of the most physically powerful men I’ve ever come across. Watch that man’s face as he wonders whether or not he’s going to have a job. My mother’s been on strike too. Same thing.

I also come from a place where all you have to do is turn on your television and you’ll see reruns of shows that believe in our humiliation—that America actually laughed along with. You are a hick. You are a hillbilly. You are a redneck. You’re nothing but shit. I’m not saying I don’t love the stereotype because the stereotype is beautiful in a way, but it’s a hell of a lot easier to steal a people’s natural resources if you can make the people feel like shit about who they are. That’s our problem. It’s not an economic problem. It’s a self-esteem problem.

God bless people who donate and care about people in other countries, but it bothers me too. I want to say come to this place and I’ll show you some shit. I’ll show you the forgotten, bastard children of our culture. It’s right in the middle of your own country.

Of course, I’m a living breathing peacock, but I know what’s coming. I guess the ultimate humiliation is death. I’ll keep peacocking though in the face of it, but I know they’re going to get me in the end. I’ll be laughing in their fucking monster faces when they do though. HAH!